Rose Conway-Walsh (Mayo, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to speak on the Finance (No. 2) Bill, which will give effect to the tax measures of budget 2024. It is important to set the budget in terms of the commentary. I was really struck by Social Justice Ireland's analysis that from April 2024 onwards, the gains accruing to welfare-dependent households as a result of this budget will fall by between 35% and 46%. These budget 2024 decisions have skewed resources in favour of higher incomes for individuals and households. Consequently, the Government's presentation of the budget as progressive is misleading. It gives the least to the 514,316 lower-income workers. It is important to get that into context. As well as the other important changes that are discussed in this Bill, such as the introduction of pillar 2 of the OECD global tax agreement, the effective taxation of large multinational companies is vitally important and Ireland must play its part in this regard.

I welcome that the Government has finally recognised the need for mortgage interest relief. I know many homeowners with a mortgage of less than €80,000. What about people in this category who have a loan that is in arrears? The measure being proposed is absolutely not the right way to go. The mortgage interest relief in itself cannot come soon enough for many struggling households, but too many people are excluded from the scheme. I hope the Minister will work to improve the scheme as it is currently presented in this Bill. As was said earlier, too often Sinn Féin policies are reluctantly half-adopted and badly implemented.

A clear example of this is the renters' tax credit. Sinn Féin wants to see a month's rent returned into renters' pockets. The Government has gone some way in this regard, but without a cap on the rents, it is as much a support for landlords as it is for renters. That could be fixed if Fianna Fáil, backed by Fine Gael, had the political will to do so. These questions go to the heart of what is right and fair. I note what ICTU has to say regarding the taxation for landlords:

The tax breaks for landlords are frankly bizarre. They will do almost nothing to increase rental supply and will make the taxation system even more regressive. It is difficult to conceive of a more ineffective and regressive tax break. Do they really believe that a landlord on the same income as a nurse should pay a lower effective tax rate on his passive income? Retention of the help to buy scheme also makes little sense and is regressive. Is it a Government policy to artificially inflate house prices?

This demonstrates that it is not only the ESRI making this point; ICTU and Social Justice Ireland are doing so as well. It is truly shocking that the Government would hand out tax breaks to landlords. It has attached no conditions, essentially, to what it is doing in terms of the rent increase. There is no money in the budget to build student accommodation. Public investment is vital if services are being sacrificed in favour of tax expenditure. Sinn Féin has shown how this could be done. The finance Bill costs €1.3 billion. That is a lot of money and we see no additional resources given to health and we see the state of our health services are in.

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